BILLY GRAHAM, THE NEW BIRTH, AND BAPTISM

This journal has from time to time commended the fine work that Billy Graham is doing in proclaiming Christ to millions of lost souls. This has significance in view of the fact that this paper circulates among people who are generally less than enthusiastic about Graham’s preaching. Most of those with whom I have labored in the Church of Christ would hardly acknowledge him as a gospel preacher, yea, he would be considered as much a subject to the plan of salvation as set forth by my brethren as any other sinner. He is in their view a Baptist preacher, not a gospel preacher. I am in a position to understand their point of view, for once held to it myself.

To be sure, it was in 1953 when Billy Graham was in Dallas at the Cotton Bowl that several of us made a raid on the place, handing out thousands of tracts over Graham’s protest. I wrote about this in Bible Talk, which was the predecessor to this journal, in these words:

The crowd was somewhat smaller than usual in the Cotton Bowl on the night of June 17. Word was passed to Billy Graham that some people were stationed at the entrances of the stadium with tracts to hand out. Billy got up and advised the crowd to the effect that “unsanctioned literature” would be handed out and that they might very well pass it by. Billy should have known not to have said that to a crowd of Texans. He could not have better advertised the tracts. Hundreds went out of their way to get the “unsanctioned” literature. Twelve humble saints passed out nearly 4,000 copies of Bible Talk in a few minutes time.

The reaction was electrifying! Inquiries by the dozens came by way of telephone and the mails. So successful was the mission that the gospel workers went back two more nights to hand out other gospel literature — some 7,000 pieces in all! The literature was designed to show the difference between the preaching of Peter in Jerusalem and that of Graham in Dallas. The people seemed to have caught the point. They are going to be wondering why the modern “God’s ball of fire” does not tell sinners today what the apostles told them in the beginning of Christianity.

My purpose now is not to take back what I said then. As I read again the material that we distributed at the Cotton Bowl, I find myself giving three cheers for the effort, even though as one grows older he supposes he knows how to say better what he said years before. While I still make the same criticism of Graham’s work that I did then, which is that he does not instruct those who make “decisions for Christ” to be immersed as the New Testament teaches, I now have a deeper appreciation for his work as a whole than I had then. Too, I said things in those tracts that were less than tactful, and perhaps less than true. For instance:

Two things are immutable about a Billy Graham revival: (1) There is sure to be a collection taken, and (2) It is certain that Billy will not tell sinners what Simon Peter told them. It cost nothing for Peter to preach a full gospel in Jerusalem, but it cost Dallas hundreds of thousands for Billy to preach a different gospel in the Cotton Bowl.

It would have been just as well had I not said that. I suppose it is true that in every Graham Crusade a collection has been taken, but there is nothing inherently wrong in that; and it is true that Graham has put himself on a reasonable salary. I am sure it is also true that he never tells people that the scriptures teach them to be immersed into Christ (even though he himself is an immersed believer), and this criticism I must still make. But it is wrong to say that he preaches a different gospel. I take that back, and I am sorry I said it, for he certainly does preach the same gospel Peter proclaimed, which is man’s victory over sin through the risen Christ. And I rejoice that he proclaims this blessed gospel!

I deeply regret that he consistently avoids spelling out the terms of pardon, or the conditions of obeying the gospel, as Peter does in Acts 2:38. I pray for Billy Graham and his work more now than I did back in 1953, and I can truthfully thank God for the great work he is doing. But I also pray that his work might be made more effective for the kingdom of God by a more faithful adherence on his part to the place of immersion in the scheme of redemption.

One is reminded all over again of the beloved evangelist’s steadfast refusal to say anything about baptism when he reads “The New Birth”, written by Graham for Christianity Today, issued with the September 10 number of that journal as a separate booklet of 24 pages. Even though this is an extensive treatment on becoming a Christian, there is hardly a single reference to baptism. One wonders if this means that Graham considers baptism wholly irrelevant to the subject of the new birth.

There are instances where it appears that he actually goes out of his way to avoid any reference to baptism. It is indeed puzzling to me that this would be the case, for his circumstance as an evangelist supported by churches that differ on baptism does not necessitate a total avoidance of the subject. He could at least quote the relevant text and leave it to the people to interpret it as they see fit.

For instance, he quotes Acts 2:37 in his essay, showing how the people asked Peter about salvation, but he ignores the next verse, which gives Peter’s answer to the question. He quotes Acts 16:30 where the jailer asks, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” This time he gives Paul’s “very simple answer” (wasn’t Peter’s also simple?), which points to faith in Christ, but makes no mention of the jailer’s baptism within the same hour. He even quotes the eunuch’s question to Philip as “What doth hinder me?” when the eunuch really said “What doth hinder me to be baptized?” In the same way he quotes John 3:3, where Jesus says that a man must be born again, but there is no reference to verse 5 where Jesus says: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” So it is with Lydia. He does say of the woman from Thyatira: “She opened her heart, believed, and was converted without struggle or conflict” (Is conversion something more than belief?). But again no reference to the fact that she too was immersed of Paul at once.

But more than all of this one is dismayed to find the evangelist so willing to pass up an opportunity to tell his readers what “the Bible says” about baptism. Notice him here: “The question that comes to many minds is this: Just what must I do actually to receive Christ? I wish it were possible for me to wrap it up in a neat little formula and hand it to you, but that is impossible. Just as there are no two snowflakes alike, there are no two experiences with Christ exactly the same.”

Did not the people on Pentecost ask an apostle of Christ that very question? Whether we call it “a neat little formula” or not, it does tell believers how to receive Christ! “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit:”

We can all appreciate Graham’s emphasis upon the diversity of experience that people enjoy in coming to Christ. This is evident in the very cases of conversion that Graham refers to: Lydia, the jailer, the Pentecostians, and the eunuch all had different experiences to tell. But what the evangelist fails to notice is that a few things were common with them all. They all believed in Jesus as the Messiah, repented of their sins, and were immersed into Him. Why does the evangelist consistently avoid what is so obviously scriptural. He might well consider giving the people “a neat little formula” such as Jesus gave His apostles: “And he said unto them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.’” (Mk. 16:15-16)

My prayer to God is that the evangelist will quote these passages that do tell sinners what to do to be saved, without comment, if he wishes, leaving it to the people to interpret as they will.

It remains something of a mystery that Graham is as indifferent as he is about immersion in the scheme of redemption at a time when there is a revival of concern for this subject among leading theologians, men that Graham has learned to love and respect through his European contacts. Men like Karl and Marcus Barth, Emil Brunner, and Erich Sauer are not to be ignored, and they are calling for a restoration of baptism in Christian preaching.

It could be that those of us who labor within the Restoration Movement are partly responsible that evangelists like Billy Graham, who very properly wish to stress the grace of God, shy away from any mention of baptism lest they suggest that man is saved by his own works. We have opposed the idea of “justification by faith only” with such zeal that we have left the impression that it is indeed by one’s own acts that he gains salvation. This cannot be, for it is only by God’s grace that anyone will be saved, and because of this we too can insist that salvation is by faith only.

But this does not mean that there is not a response to faith, a principle that is found all through the Bible. It is always a responding faith that saves, whether Abraham offering his son, Namaan dipping in a river, the Israelites marching around walls, or the Philippian jailer being immersed the same hour of the night. It is improper to say that these acts saved them, for it was faith that saved them through God’s grace. But it was a responsive faith.

It is by God’s grace that we have an act by which to respond. If He had not named something, we should have sought for such, for we need something (and should want something) that we can do to express the feeling of our heart. This explains why the eunuch requested baptism. He believed and he wanted to express his faith.

Alexander Campbell, who remains the ablest spokesman of the Restoration concept in our history, was well aware of the danger of confusing immersion as an act whereby man gains some right of his own to God’s favor. For this reason Campbell spoke of baptism as “the cultivation of grace.” Here is a concept, once it is properly set forth, that could go far in restoring immersion to its proper place in Christian teaching.

We are not asking Billy Graham to preach baptism. We want him to go on proclaiming the love of God manifested through the sacrifice of the Christ for our sins. God forbid that he should stop preaching the risen Christ and start delivering discourses on baptism. The evangels of our Lord never did such; neither should Billy Graham or any of us.

We ask him rather to preach our Lord with such fervor that men will cry out as they did on Pentecost: What shall we do? Let him answer in the same way Peter did, that they are to repent and be baptized for the remission of their sins, and he will then, as did Peter, be setting the terms for the cultivation of grace.

The response of faith in baptism may be likened to the cultivation of a beautiful garden. The story of preparing the soil, planting the seed, watering the flowers, and hoeing the weeds is a story of faith. We are tempted to coin a word here — faithing. That is what cultivates the garden. The soil, seed, rain, germination, growth are all of God. The garden stands only by God’s goodness. But faithing was necessary, or call it a faithful response to the goodness of God. While the garden is a reality only by God’s grace, it is nonetheless true that the faithful response of the gardener was a necessary condition. This illustrates our point that baptism may be viewed as the cultivation of grace.

Questions having to do with how much one must know when he is baptized, whether one is saved before or after baptism, or whether the pious unimmersed are Christians may not be necessary. Differences here may push men to extreme positions in either direction. Let us preach the Christ in all His beauty, and show that it is only by grace through faith that the sinner can be saved. But, like the apostles, let us set forth the terms whereby man can make the loving response of faith to the proclamation of heaven, thus allowing for the cultivation of grace. Then baptism will again be appreciated as it was in the primitive church. — the Editor

Postscript

Shortly after writing the above, I heard a brother on a prominent Church of Christ radio program from Dallas make this statement, and these were his exact words: “Salvation is not an entirely free gift, for there is something that man must do.” There is no question in my mind that this brother means to be true to the Bible, but we must recognize that this is a gross perversion of the gospel of Christ. It is the same fatal error that has been in men’s minds since “the circumcision party” did its deadly work in the first years of Christianity: the proud notion that it takes more than the grace of God to save a man.

We have reason to fear that the radio minister’s idea that “salvation is not entirely a free gift” is a common notion among our people. If this is true, then we must conclude that we are without understanding of the vital truth Paul spoke of in Eph. 2:8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God — not because of works, lest any man should boast.”